Strange Sleep Habits Of The Stars

Can't sleep? You're not alone. According to the National Institutes of Health, between 50 and 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep disorders or occasional sleep problems. And among the sleepless ranks are some of our favorite famous faces.

But while we all have little quirks that help us to combat a sleepless night -- counting sheep, warm milk, white noise machine -- some take it to a new extreme. So we rounded up some of the most bizarre celebrity sleep habits. Tell us: which is the strangest of them all?

Eminem

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Sleep experts often recommend black out shades to keep rooms dark and promote quality rest -- but rapper Eminem reportedly takes that to a whole new level, wrapping tin foil around the windows to keep the light out, according to The Sun.

Celebrities -- they're just like us. Ninety million American adults snore, according to the National Sleep Foundation, and the "Top Gun" star is among them. Many partners of snorers become the "silent sufferers," but not in the Cruise household.

While they were married, Katie Holmes reportedly maintained her beauty rest while Cruise snored away in a sound-proof snoratorium, according to the Daily Mail.

'Whoever uses the snoring room cannot be heard outside the locked door," an alleged visitor told the paper. "It's very small, comfortable and dark, maybe a former nursery."

Mariah Carey

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Most doctors recommend that healthy adults aim for seven to eight hours of sleep a night -- but the singer apparently doubles that. According to Health.com, Carey told Interview magazine in 2004 that she prefers to sleep a whopping 15 hours.

She also reportedly sleeps with 20 humidifiers surrounding her to create a "steam room" effect. As Health.com puts it: "While the machines can help to moisten dry air and soothe sore throats, usually one will do."

Lady Gaga

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Remember that egg-like contraption Lady Gaga arrived in for the 2011 Grammy's? Well she might not be ready to give it up quite yet.

According to a 2011 report in the Mirror, the "Bad Romance" singer (who once claimed not to sleep for three whole days) had allegedly, er, hatched a plan to renovate her New York City apartment with the notorious egg taking the place of a double bed.

"She felt so at home in the egg on stage -- she spent hours in it meditating and says when she's in it she feels at peace," a supposed "insider" told the publication.

But while the hours spent in bed are pretty typical (and healthy!), his fashion choices are a bit more unusual. "I wear a long, full-length white shirt, in a material called poplin imperial, made for me by Hilditch & Key in Paris after a design of a 17th-century men's nightshirt I saw at the Victoria and Albert Museum," he told the magazine.

Michael Phelps

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The Olympian even trains in his sleep. He told Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes" that he has slumbered in a high-altitude sleeping chamber, the Baltimore Sunreported.

"Once I'm already in my room I still have to open a door to get into my bed," he said on the show. "It's just like a giant box. It's like 'boy and the bubble.'"

Supposedly, the chamber, which is set to 8,500 to 9,000 feet, aids performance by forcing his body to keep working (by decreasing oxygen) even while he's resting.

If you've ever drifted off to sleep or just woken up from sleep but were unable to move any part of your body -- spurring a sense that you are frozen in your bed -- you may have experienced sleep paralysis.
Sleep paralysis is more common in the seconds to minutes when we're first waking up, whether in the morning or in the middle of the night, Gehrman said.
When we are in REM sleep, our muscles are paralyzed so that we don't act out our dreams. But with sleep paralysis, a part of the brain wakes sooner than the rest, giving a sense of wakefulness and alertness -- even though the body's muscles are still paralyzed, Gehrman explained.
However, <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html" target="_hplink">sleep paralysis isn't dangerous</a> despite the unsettling feeling experienced by people who have been through it, according to Stanford University. To decrease the number of sleep paralysis episodes you have, stress reduction, getting enough hours of sleep a night and making sure you have a good sleep schedule could help.